Franco Guerzoni. Sipari
Press release
Sipari Theatre Curtains, is the title of the show of works by Franco Guerzoni which opens the new round of exhibitions in Palazzo Forti on 26 March 2004.
We will be presenting a series of 25 works specifically prepared for this show. Curated by Giorgio Cortenova and Fabrizio D'Amico, it aims at showing the public the latest phase of the artist's work, a meditation on his own painting which now demonstrates an ever greater interest in the specifics of the painted surface.
His work, the outcome of a long 'courtship' on the canvas between his thoughts and the activity of his hands, has all the density of fresco painting and, instead of creating reflections, absorbs the eye: the chalk, pigments, and coloured powders that characterise it evoke the ancient patina of archaeological remains. His activity treads a tightrope between the pleasure of ruins and the fascination of restoration, this last understood as the meeting point for formal and chromatic questions recalling distant cultures, symbols, and fragments of our own past. His preceding work, titled Pompeii/Bombay, 2001, attempted to retrace the deep affinities between two apparently different cultures by harmonising the warm orange of the East and the dusty blues of Roman frescos.
In Guerzoni's latest work he elaborates a kind of bass-relief that allows it to be red from various viewpoints: The painting has slightly concave and convex forms so as to give the viewer a vibrant yet purposely unstable image. The works, created by additions to and subtractions from the gesso surface, have monochrome tonalities, from chalky whites to deeply opaque blacks, from blinding reds to blues.
The final veiling of the canvas surface is a kind of 'theatre curtain' that hides and yet reveals the narrative taking place within it.
For this show Marsilio Editore will be publishing a volume, with contributions by Giorgio Cortenova and Fabrizio D'Amico, an interview with the artist curated by Patrizia Nuzzo, and an accurate biography and bibliography curated by Gianni Schiavon.
During the exhibition period at Palazzo Forti, in April the civic museum in Reggio Emilia will be showing two works by Franco Guerzoni: Bianca e volta and Arcangeli, curated by Piergiovanni Castagnoli and Giulio Bizzarri.
Franco Guerzoni was born in 1948 in Modena where he lives and works. From the beginning of the 70s he has interested himself in image representational systems through the use of photography, strongly influenced by Conceptualism and his exchange of ideas with such artists from Modena as Franco Vaccari, Claudio Parmiggiani, Giuliano Della Casa, Carlo Cremaschi, the photographer Luigi Ghirri, as well as others involved with new languages.